The company has confirmed that there’s been an unexpected issue with how their app continues to run in the background – even if it’s switched off on the Background App Refresh screen. The concern was first raised by Matt Galligan, co-founder of news service, Circa, who says:

“Because the app isn’t ‘sleeping’ properly when I hit the home button, it continues to drain. That extraneous background usage, despite not providing any value to me at all, is keeping the app alive 2x longer than my actual usage.”

Facebook has since acknowledged the problem, and released a fix while admitting that the app does indeed eat up battery power (something they’re also working on). The refresh problem stems from two underlying issues: audio sessions continuing despite shutting down the app after watching a video (not actually playing anything, but still running and so using power), and CPU spin, which Facebook’s Ari Grant describes as:

“… like a child in a car asking, ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’ with the question not resulting in any progress to reaching the destination. This repeated processing causes our app to use more battery than intended.”

If you’ve not updated the app since before October, now’s a great time to do so! Even if you’re up to date, you might still find that the app is frequently found at the top of your battery usage statistics (available in Settings > General > Usage), especially if you receive lots of notifications.

As an alternative, you can simply log into Facebook through Safari. It might still consume your time, but at least you don’t have the worry of what hidden additions are taking up power. Then there’s Paper (free for iOS), a magazine-like interface compiling “stories” from your friends. It isn’t perfect, but its limitations are basically the same as the typical Facebook app (like an inability to edit statuses), and it’s got some cool features.

The Messenger app isn’t quite so likely to affect your battery greatly simply because you won’t be scrolling through feeds and clicking on links.

Twitter

If Facebook uses considerable power, so does social media in general: Instagram, Tumblr, and certainly Twitter.

Depending on how many people you follow, you can get utterly consumed by the wealth of knowledge (not meant sarcastically) on Twitter. Limit the number you keep track of if you don’t want to be constantly bombarded, particularly where notifications are concerned.

It’s worth sacrificing quick loading time for a longer battery though, right? Alternatively, you can check out Twitter using Safari on your iPhone or do it the old fashioned way and use a computer. Madness.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is the behemoth of the instant messaging sphere which was gobbled up by Facebook in 2014. Just like its parent company’s other app, it eats up your battery too.

WhatsApp checks for new messages as soon as it can latch onto Internet coverage. Whether it’s connected to Wi-Fi or using up your cell data, it’ll constantly scramble for new data. Once more, you can manage this using the Background App Refresh or turn off your Wi-Fi selectively, again through Settings, but that does sort of defeat the point of it.

If most of the people you’re in contact with have iDevices, you might as well stick with iMessages and use WhatsApp sparingly when not out and about.

It’s easy to turn off your location updates, which will stop your smartphone from scouring for GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Just head to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and disable on an app-by-app basis the services you’d rather your iPhone not report its location to.

Naturally, turning that off will have wider implications the software in question including weather, or localized shopping vouchers. Not having the Weather app collecting data wherever you go will also save battery strength. Even Apple recommends it.

If you know you’re going to a specific place, it’s worth checking out Google Maps on your PC and printing off directions. Otherwise, get instructions using Safari. Google Maps tends to double its battery requirements by using your cellular connection to download data as you go, so if you absolutely do need GPS functionality but would rather save on 3G or 4G drain, a free app like MAPS.ME goes a long way.

Skype

Just like Facebook, without notifying you, Skype checks for incoming VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls whenever you’re connected to Wi-Fi, constantly making contact with their servers to make sure you’re not missing out on an all-important chat. It doesn’t matter if you’ve killed the background process or not! AppInstructor‘s Scotty Loveless says:

“Apps that can make or receive calls, like Skype, Viber, Tango, WhatsApp, and Facebook are able to check for incoming calls without notifying you. I believe these types of apps sometimes abuse this exception and could have possibly influenced Apple to add Background App Refresh as the sanctioned method for this type of behavior.”

Some even claim that Skype uses around 30% of their battery power each day! If it’s looking for calls, you won’t even get a notification icon pop up. And once more, it’s not something that only affects the iPhone: Android users suffer and Skype admits:

“Skype, by nature, does use more battery than many other apps… You can reduce the amount of battery usage by closing some other apps that you do not use… Remember that the development team has surely made it a priority to make the app consume less battery and kill off the bugs that cause that.”

Instead of throwing other apps in front of the proverbial train, though, you could simply keep Skype chats solely to your PC or laptop, and rely on iMessages, texting, FaceTime and normal phone calls when you’re out and about.

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Resistance

February 19, 2016 at 12:22 pm

I am sick of those kind of advice. Please erase all apps you bought your smartphone for, and your smartphone work faster/better. Ok, they have not advice to erase e-mail, phonebook, and old messages. Reason no.1 for buying of smartphone is we can use it for internet access and connection to social network anywhere.

Silly answer mate.
If you read the article you'll know why they advice you to remove them.
If they would make there apps better to work with doze modus in android nougat, or anything else to avoid battery drain it would be much better.
The facebook and messenger app are buggy apps.
Just avoid those 2 and you're good to go.
There are alternatives for facebook and messenger that are better for your battery, but not as feature rich as facebook app it self.

When he’s not watching television, reading books ‘n’ Marvel comics, listening to The Killers, and obsessing over script ideas, Philip Bates pretends to be a freelance writer. He enjoys collecting everything.